The elemental wherewithal of our farms and our food is in motion. Whirlwinds of change bear upon our land, air, water and climate. Fundamental forces have shouldered their way front and center. The land calls urgently.

As reported worldwide this month, scientific evidence shows that the level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide (CO2), has mounted far beyond the danger zone. Heat is rising. Consequences are evident.

CO2 has now reached an average daily level above 400 parts per million, a level the Earth has not experienced for three million years. That was during an epoch called the Pliocene.

The overwhelming majority of scientists understand that this current rise in CO2 portends epic changes.

“Our food systems, our cities, our people and our very way of life developed within a stable range of climatic conditions on Earth,” former Vice President Al Gore observed in the wake of the CO2 report. “Without immediate and decisive action, these favorable conditions on Earth could become a memory.”

Following the front-page news about the rapid deterioration of the earth’s climate, came two other hard news stories that underscore the matter of food vulnerability: news of the disease-driven collapse of the staple food crop for more than 500 million human beings in Africa, and news of grave troubles for citrus fruits in America and around the world.

Climate change and crop disease are serious business. Here the land is not just calling, it’s shrieking.

Cassava root

In Africa the cassava plant – which produces a large, edible root – is succumbing to brown streak disease. Africa already suffers debilitating food shortages. Because casava is the staple food for the continent, this plant disease is calamitous.

Meanwhile, the citrus industry is grappling with an infernal bacterial disease that has now killed millions of plants in the southeastern United States and is threatening to spread across the entire country. The disease has also been found in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Citrus Greening, also called Huanglongbing or Yellow Dragon Disease, is fatal. The bacteria devastate trees, rendering bitter, misshapen oranges, then death for the entire organism. There is no known cure.

“This year (2012-13) was a real kick in the gut,” Florida’s agriculture commissioner told The New York Times. “It is now everywhere, and it’s just as bad as the doomsayers said it would be.”

* * * * * * * *

When I absorb this short stack of climate and food news — just a fraction of the farm and food factors in flux — I realize that we must dig in now more resolutely to build a clean, respectful, sacred and sustainable foundation for civilization. That is the direction forward.

Many thousands of local, organic agrarian farm-and-food initiatives have arisen across the Americas in the last 25 years. They offer a wide array of working models. Those models can and should be replicated and emulated far and wide. They represent intelligent and promising responses to the imperative call of the land.

Organic farms and the cooperative food systems they are entwined with (the whole, broad range of 21st century agrarian initiatives) have manifold positive responses to the central issues, and a track record of evidence. They sequester carbon in the land and thereby mitigate CO2, helping stabilize climate. They offer clean, fresh food directly to people who live near the source. They provide dignified work in nature. They knit together healthy webs of relationship, both personal and digital, around concerns of a foundational nature to every human being. They teach essential ethical values. They establish oases of radiant environmental health. And they bring large numbers of people into a more direct and equitable relationship with the human beings who grow their food, and the land it is grown upon.

21st century agrarian initiatives also provide wholesome anchoring points (network nodes) for the brittle high-tech, digital-wave culture emerging so dynamically in our world. We are just at the beginning of that, really.

The cooperative development of clean local food systems is in no way a boutique idea or a passing fad. It is a key element of modern food security, and it is emerging not just as prudent but also as essential.It is also about the renewal of our overall human relationship with the earth that sustains us.

I’ve had those feelings sometimes, too, but have in my way come to understand that everything matters — especially does it matter being a positive proactive model for others. It strengthens me to recall the words of the late Iroquois Chief, Leon Shenandoah, who I had the privilege of knowing in the 1990s. Before the UN one year at the end of a lengthy oration, Grandfather Leon said: “We human beings are a spiritual energy that is thousands of times stronger than nuclear energy. Our energy is the combined will of all people with the spirit of the natural world, to be of one body, one heart, and one mind for peace.”

Amen! Small diversified farms provide countless benefits (not the least of which is the best tasting food in the world) and one of the most important is maintaining biological diversity in opposition to the industrial monocultures that create much of the trouble you describe.

I read these words and understand, but at times wonder if the view we have is so lofty so as not to focus on reality. There is danger ahead for farms and the food supply without doubt. According to the historical records some 13,000 years ago the Chesapeake bay was the Chesapeake creek, as the earth has warmed, ice melted and formed the bay. This means that the earth was in a warming trend 12,900 years before Henry Ford cranked up a model A. I am not convinced that we can with any certainty know what the C02 level was in the atmosphere 3 million years ago. I am convinced that AL Gore has used global warming as a revenue source, and his concern over the C02 report strikes me as hollow.
In the effort to reduce greenhouse gasses it was decided to use food for fuel, ethanol was born. Corn previously used for food and animal feed was made into ethanol. The prices of corn and chicken, beef, pork, and many other items have gone up nearly 500%. In addition it takes 1.78 gallons of gasoline to produce 1 gallon on ethanol. It is a grand thought to save the world by way of a family garden plot. But that garden plot may be the hedge against starvation if as a nation we continue to listen to the prognostications of the AL Gore types who would wring their hands over a C02 report, yet applaud ethanol while millions of people can no longer afford to buy basic food for their children. Three million years of C02 reports may lead to a theory, a starving children are a reality.

Author Steven McFadden

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